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When Maestros Cry

May 15, 2015 7:09 amMay 15, 2015 7:09 am

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Via Mark Thoma, today in liberal fascism: Apparently I’m part of the liberal speech police, blocking debate on important subjects, because I criticized Alan Greenspan for planning to headline a goldbug conference taking place next to the Fed’s annual Jackson Hole event. And it’s true — I used vicious, undemocratic tactics like calling attention to Greenspan’s record of bad predictions. I even used sarcasm and ridicule. And you know who else used sarcasm and ridicule? HitlerThe Piranha Brothers.

It’s still quite amazing to see how thin-skinned such people are, their outraged cries of ill-treatment when faced with any kind of pushback (and most of all, of course, anyone who makes them look silly.) But there’s an extra bonus from this article: confirmation of just how bad this particular group is on economic substance, and how truly inappropriate Greenspan’s planned participation was.

For the author of the article declares Greenspan obviously correct to issue dire warnings about Fed policies — after all, the dollar’s value was dropping in terms of gold, which he takes to be self-evidently a sign of big trouble.

But the Fed doesn’t care about the price of gold, and its indifference has been justified by history. Gold has been anything but a stable store of value: if you bought gold in the late 1970s the real value of your investment fell 60 percent over the next few years. Nor has gold been a predictor of future inflation — actually, even in the 70s it was a lagging, not leading, indicator, and in recent years it was telling us nothing at all about inflation, past or future.

So Greenspan was planning to talk to a bunch of monetary cranks with a sideline in anti-gay activism (or maybe it’s the other way around). To do so is, of course, his right; to criticize him for his decision, and make fun of his bad judgment, is mine.